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From: michael@ihnss.UUCP (M. J. Morgan)
Newsgroups: net.nlang
Subject: Re: Second Person Plural
Message-ID: <2609@ihnss.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 7-Sep-85 13:33:03 EDT
Article-I.D.: ihnss.2609
Posted: Sat Sep  7 13:33:03 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 8-Sep-85 16:14:06 EDT
Organization: AT&T Bell Labs, Naperville, IL
Lines: 49


Charli Phillips writes:
> "You" is plural, not formal, and "thou" is singular, not familiar.
> (Historically speaking, of course.)  I don't believe English ever had 
> a "familiar" second person pronoun, just singular and plural.  (The
> second person plural was often used to indicate respect, and may have
> been considered idiomatically the second person singular formal.)  In
> any event, the true second person singular gradually dropped out of
> the language, leaving us with only one second person pronoun, used for
> singular and plural, formal and familiar - a truly deplorable situation.

"You" takes the third person plural verb conjugation, but that does not
mean that it is a third person or necessarily plural pronoun.  It is the
"formal" second person pronoun in English, singular and plural.  "Thou" used
to serve as the "familiar" singular second person pronoun, with "ye" as the
corresponding plural.

The German Sie, du, and ihr parallel the English you, thou, and ye in
both conjugation and meaning.  German has retained all three words, however,
while "thou" and "ye" have for the most part disappeared from English.
"Thou" and its other cases (objective - thee, possessive - thy and thine,
reflexive - thyself) still linger on in some areas, such as poetry and
biblical writings ("... thy kingdom come, thy will be done ....").  "Ye"
underwent a transformation from nominative plural to nominative singular and
later to accusative, singular and plural, and can still be found in some
dialectal speech ("What have ye here?  I'll get ye for that").

French uses "vous" for the formal second person, singular and plural, and
for the familiar second person plural and conjugates verbs with vous in
the second person plural; "tu" is the French familiar second person singular
pronoun, taking a second person singular verb conjugation.

As in English, Spanish is losing some of its formality.  It has four words
for the second person, "tu," "vosotros," "usted," and "ustedes," one each
for the familiar second person, singular and plural, and the formal second
person, singular and plural.  The "familiar" pronouns take second person
verb conjugations, and the "formal" pronouns (usted and ustedes) take third
person verb conjugations.  "Vosotros" has pretty much disappeared from the
language in Latin America, with "ustedes" being used exclusively for the
second person plural.  I have also talked to people complaining of a tendency
of younger people towards using "usted" exclusively for the second person
singular.

As an interesting aside, note that the first person plural and familiar
second person plural pronouns rhyme in all the above languages:  we and ye,
wir and ihr, nous and vous, and nosotros and vosotros.

				Mike Morgan
				ihnp4!ihnss!michael